A church dictionary

by Walter Farquhar Hook

AMERICA. (See Church in America.)

AMICE. An oblong square of fine linen used as a vestment in the ancient Church by the priest. At first introduced to cover the shoulders and neck, it afterwards received the addition of a hood to cover the head until the priest came before the altar, when the hood was thrown back. We have the remains of this in the hood.

The “grey amice,” a tippet or cape of fur, was retained for a time by the English clergy after the Reformation; but, as there was no express authority for this, it was prohibited by the bishops in the reign of Elizabeth.

The word Amice is sometimes used with greater latitude. Thus Milton, (Par. Reg. iv.,)

——morning fair

Came forth, with pilgrim steps, in amice grey.

By most ritualists, the Amictus, or Amicia, and the Almutium, of the Western Churches were considered the same. But W. Gilbert French, in an interesting and curiously illustrated Essay on “The Tippets of the Canons Ecclesiastical,” considers that there is a distinction between the amice and the almuce. The former he identifies with the definition given above. The latter he considers to be the choir tippet, worn by all members of cathedral churches, of materials varying with the ecclesiastical rank of the wearer. The hood part of the almuce was in the course of time disused, and a square cap substituted; and the remaining parts gave rise to the modern cape, worn in foreign churches, and to the ornament resembling the stole, like the ordinary scarf worn in our churches. The almuce, or “aumusse,” is now an ornament of fur or other materials carried over the arm by the canons of many French and other continental cathedrals. In the Dictionnaire de Droit Canonique (Lymr. 1787) it is defined as an ornament which was first borne on the head, afterwards carried on the arm. Cardinal Bona only mentions the amictus, describing it as in the first paragraph of this article. He identifies it, but certainly without any reason, with the Jewish ephod. There seems nothing improbable in the various terms above mentioned having been originally identical. (See Band, Hood, Scarf, and Tippet.)—Jebb.

AMPHIBALUM. (See Chasible.)

ANABAPTISTS. (See Baptists.) Certain sectaries whose title is compounded of two Greek words, (ἀνα and βαπτιζω,) one of which signifies “anew,” and the other “to baptize;” and whose distinctive tenet it is, that those who have been baptized in their infancy ought to be baptized anew.

John of Leyden, Münzer, Knipperdoling, and other German enthusiasts about the time of the Reformation, were called by this name, and held that Christ was not the son of Mary, nor true God; that we were righteous by our own merits and sufferings, that there was no original sin, and that infants were not to be baptized. They rejected, also, communion with other churches, magistracy, and oaths; maintained a communion of goods, polygamy, and that a man might put away his wife if not of the same religion with himself; that the godly should enjoy monarchy here on earth; that man had a free will in spiritual things; and that any man might preach and administer the sacraments. The Anabaptists of Moravia called themselves apostolical, going barefoot, washing one another’s feet, and having community of goods; they had a common steward, who distributed equally things necessary; they admitted none but such as would get their livelihood by working at some trade; they had a common father for their spirituals, who instructed them in their religion, and prayed with them every morning before they went abroad; they had a general governor of the church, whom none knew but themselves, they being obliged to keep it secret. They would be silent a quarter of an hour before meat, covering their faces with their hands, and meditating, doing the like after meat, their governor observing them in the mean time, to reprove what was amiss; they were generally clad in black, discoursing much of the last judgment, pains of hell, and cruelty of devils, teaching that the way to escape these was to be rebaptized, and to embrace their religion. They caused considerable disturbance in Germany, but were at length subdued. To this sect allusion is made in our 38th Article. By the present Anabaptists in England, the tenets subversive of civil government are no longer professed.